Latest news with #Suella
Spectator
4 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
What Suella Braverman's plan for quitting the ECHR gets right
This morning's paper on leaving the ECHR from Suella Braverman and the Prosperity Institute doesn't say much that hasn't been said somewhere before. It reiterates the fairly obvious political case for a UK ECHR exit. It talks about the erosion of sovereignty over immigration, policing and vast swathes of social policy; the baneful 'living instrument' doctrine that means we have now effectively given a blank cheque to a self-selecting and unaccountable bench to second-guess our democratic process in ever more intrusive ways; the Strasbourg court's arrogation of powers, such as the right to order interim measures never contemplated in 1950; and so on. The paper then goes in detail through the legal machinery of disentanglement, starting with the obvious point that the Convention itself provides for a right to leave on giving six months' notice, and then describing the legislative and administrative processes involved. But don't be fooled. This may not be exciting reading (Suella is, after all, a lawyer); but the appearance of this document at this time matters a lot. One very significant point is that the paper in one place meets head-on the arguments lazily trotted out as slam-dunk wins for the case against withdrawal. Does the UK's good reputation depend on ECHR membership? Doubtful. There are plenty of countries not members of regional agreements that are admirably free (think Canada and Australia), not to mention ECHR members that, shall we say, leave something to be desired (stand up, Azerbaijan). Reform the ECHR from within? We've tried that, and it's had no effect in the areas that matter. Tweak the Human Rights Act? It won't work with the Strasbourg court sitting in the background waiting to pounce. The right of the EU to withdraw police cooperation under the Withdrawal Agreement if we denounce the ECHR? Bring it on, and if need be, call their bluff. They have as much to lose as we have: it's a small risk, and one worth taking. What of the elephant in the room, the Good Friday Agreement? More awkward, but nothing insuperable here. For one thing, it doesn't actually bar the UK from withdrawing from the ECHR. Instead it talks much more vaguely of the incorporation of ECHR provisions in Ulster law and court remedies to enforce it. If necessary, there must be some political horse-trading here, and in the end, Westminster must be prepared to put its foot down and face down Irish nationalists if necessary in the interest of a common rights regime in the UK. To this extent, the Braverman document has continued the process of moving ECHR scepticism away from the fringe and placing it firmly in the range of the sayable and even politically plausible. More to the point, it also fills another void. So far, calls to ditch the ECHR have suffered from a similar difficulty to that which faced the Leave movement right up to the 2016 referendum and might well have tipped it into defeat: it has been heavy on criticism but light on practicalities. By laying down in some detail the measures to be taken to remove the ECHR from our law both in form and substance and opening these to debate, this may well reassure electors otherwise wavering. Looking more widely, today's events could just indicate a subtle shift in political tectonics. Doubts about the way the ECHR is chipping away at the institutions of this country are engaging electors who might previously have shrugged off human rights as something remote and unconcerning. Whenever they read of an undeserving visitor to this country allowed to stay, often at our expense as taxpayers, on the basis of family life here or possible beastliness abroad, they increasingly connect this with the ECHR; so too when, as a harassed commuter or housewife, they find they cannot go about their business because of some demonstration said to be protected by a European right to cause inconvenience to the public. Nor is it only electors. Teasingly, this morning's Telegraph said that Suella's proposals had cross-party backing not only from key figures on the Tory right (predictable: after all, even Kemi has said she is open to talk of abandoning the Strasbourg regime) and also from Reform, whose position has always been clear, but also from the DUP and even some from blue Labour (no names yet, but an educated guess might light on figures like Jonathan Brash, the free-thinking MP for Hartlepool). Whisper it quietly, but human rights scepticism is becoming the new mainstream. Defenders of the Strasbourg status quo are shrinking to an increasingly small caucus of senior Labour figures, Tory grandees and a motley collection of urban intellectuals and academics. It's quite possible that within a few years, ECHR enthusiasm will have declined to a niche interest in much the same way as, say, Euroscepticism did twenty years ago. Now that's a change worth contemplating.
Spectator
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Rael Braverman quits Reform after attacks on Suella
A day is a long time in politics. Just 24 hours ago, the husband of former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman was a signed-up member of Reform UK. This morning, however, Rael Braverman announced that he has left Nigel Farage's party – 'effective immediately'. Life comes at you fast, eh? It comes after the party took aim at Suella on Tuesday following the revelation that a Ministry of Defence leak in 2022 had endangered the lives of thousands of Afghans, resulted in launch of top secret Operation Rubric and cost the taxpayer over £7bn. Taking aim at the former Conservative government, Reform UK's ex-chairman and current head of DOGE Zia Yusuf was quick to point the finger on Twitter. 'The British government learnt of the data leak in August 2023,' Yusuf told his Twitter followers on Tuesday. He went on: 24,000 Afghans secretly granted asylum, costing British taxpayers up to £7bn. The government covered it up. Who was in government? Home Secretary: Suella Braverman. Immigration minister: Robert Jenrick. Shots fired! Yusuf later reposted a tweet from this morning that read: '22 hours since Suella's last post.' He then separately tweeted 15 minutes later: 'Sometimes silence speaks loudest of all.' There's no love lost there, eh? It had been rumoured that the former Tory Cabinet Secretary could be the next high-profile defector to Reform – but after this morning's developments, Mr S reckons it is safe to assume that is off the table now… Steerpike has contacted Reform UK for a comment on the whole palaver. While Farage's group may have lost a rather vocal member, they have brought about a timely reminder of the Tories' past record in government…
The Guardian
06-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
The makings of an Englishman
I'm not sure that I entirely agree with Nels Abbey's conclusion regarding what constitutes Englishness, although ethnicity is certainly one factor that is used by others to determine whether you pass that test (Dear Suella: I was born in London and raised in Oxfordshire. What do you reckon – can I be English?, 5 March). As someone who is white and of mixed first-generation Polish on my father's side and English/Welsh extraction on my mother's side, I have mixed feelings on this subject. As a child, I initially had no doubt that I was English until one day in the 1970s when I was asked at school, during an important football World Cup qualifier, which team I supported. When I responded, 'Poland', I was informed by my classmates that I was therefore no longer English. Like many people from different cultural backgrounds, this was against a backdrop of far-right anti-immigrant hatred and misunderstanding. And although my experience was not as extreme as that suffered by many others, I was still very conscious of the potential for hatred and violence, which in my case culminated in some children standing up and saying 'Sieg heil' when I entered the classroom. Chillingly, one of my daughters had a similar experience at university, where a student scratched a swastika on the bedroom door in her dorm. However, as a child it was at that point in my life when I started to question my own perception of Englishness and decided that, although I very much wanted to integrate into UK society, I would in future consider myself to be British and not English. British seemed more inclusive and less SzrejderSolihull, West Midlands My wife's British, I'm German. Brexit caused her to also acquire German citizenship, just in case. Her Scots father was of Ulster extraction and her English mother had southern Irish ancestors. We have three sons. The oldest was born in Dorset; the second one in South Africa. We adopted the youngest 10 years later because his (German) birth mother wasn't able to take care of him. He couldn't have become part of our family if we'd stayed in (apartheid) South Africa because of his brown skin. His biological father was most likely from England. So here's the question: who of our family is 'English'? I am definitely not, despite my UK settled status. My wife considers herself British and 'passport-German'. She loves all her roots – English, Scots and Irish. Our sons have British and German citizenship. They regard themselves as German as well as British, with a bias on the English part when it comes to football and GemmerWorthing, West Sussex Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
